Book Review

There can be little doubting the impact that Raphael Samuel made upon the study of history and its promotion beyond the more traditional confines of the academic discipline. His death in 1996 was a loss in both personal and intellectual terms. This volume, assembled and edited by Alison Light, Sally Alexander, and Gareth Stedman Jones, with assistance from Robin Blackburn, is intended to be the second part of the Theatres of Memory trilogy, the first part of which was published in 1994. The editors have attempted to follow as closely as possible Samuel's intended contents and have drawn together completed pieces and all-but-complete drafts, although they point out that his continually evolving style of writing makes any effort at a definitive version well-nigh impossible.

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Island Stories engages with the multiplexity of issues surrounding questions of British nationality and identity and the ways in which "history" both aided the construction of those notions and reflects the continuing unease with any definitive view of them. The essays are gathered together in four sections—"Nations, States, and Empires"; "English Journeys"; "History, the Nations, and the Schools"; and "The War of Ghosts." As the editors explain, the range of writing techniques and styles varies enormously—"synthesis, overview and argument, political commentary and literary journalism, travelogue, autobiography." In this sense, contemporary influences upon the discipline of history are broadly apparent, but Samuel's writing technique is also a reflection of his unique and eclectic approach, drawing as it did upon not only an intensity of scholarship but also a fierce desire topresent history as far more than a self-contained and exclusive academic discipline.

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